DETOURSAHEADFROMTRAFFICWAYWORK

Motorists will have a hard time ignoring South Lawrence Trafficway construction in coming weeks.

South Lawrence Trafficway construction will cause delays Tuesday for Topeka-bound commuters on the Kansas Turnpike.

Traffic will be stopped for periods of about five minutes while construction crews install steel beams for the trafficway bridge now being built about five miles west of Lawrence, said John Pasley, Douglas County's project manager for the SLT.

Flagmen and Kansas Highway Patrol officers will be stopping traffic in the westbound lanes from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The bridge will link the trafficway to the Kansas Turnpike Authority's new Lecompton interchange.

That's just the first of several changes in people's driving patterns that trafficway construction will be causing in coming weeks.

Next month, trafficway construction will force all cars driving on the western-most half mile of Clinton Parkway, now a four-lane road, into the south two lanes. Plans call for the last 500 feet of Clinton Parkway to be moved north, where it will link with the interchange bridge now under construction at the intersection of Douglas County Road 13.

Meanwhile, paving of the new five-lane bridge at the intersection of the trafficway and U.S. Highway 40 will be completed within the next few weeks, and traffic will be diverted onto the bridge. The bridge, which will be part of another trafficway interchange, is in the middle of a one-mile stretch of Highway 40 that is being replaced.

Pasley said grading for the first nine miles of the trafficway, which will extend from Douglas County Road 438 north of the new turnpike interchange to U.S. Highway 59 south of Lawrence, will be completed by the end of the year. Paving contracts will be let early next year, with completion of that stretch of the road anticipated by the end of 1996.

A supplemental environmental impact statement will determine the route of the final five miles of the trafficway, which will run from Highway 59 to Kansas Highway 10 east of Lawrence. Pasley said a draft of the SEIS is likely to be completed in mid- to late September, with a public hearing scheduled at least 45 days afterward.